We've been slowrolling season three, so we're only up to the 4th episode (Antilles Extraction) so far. Season is... okay I guess? Nothing to really write home about.

What's REALLY annoying me is the SEVERE reductio-ad-absurdum of the size of military forces involved (yes I know that's not the correct use of that term, but I'm using it anyway, dammit). Asking us to think that a dozen fighters or a handful of pilots will impact anything in a galaxy-spanning rebellion is laughable - even when you consider we're only dealing with one regional group. Plus that's before you even include the scenes where they lose half a dozen fighters or multiple transports on a given mission gone bad (which are at least reasonable numbers), so they're not even consistent about it. I can take a little bit of number-fudging, but this is really bad.

The Wedge mission was particularly galling though - two cadet pilots is a "mass defection" requiring a significant military operation risking your best operative team and significant military assets? Two?! Come on! Would it really have murdered the production staff to copy-paste a few extra pilots/fighters and have the characters refer to noticeably larger numbers? Never mind that they're essentially throwing out the story of the mutiny on the Concord Dawn (which was a pretty good one!) to replace it with this crap. UGH. It's episodes like this which feel far less like Star Wars and far more like a phoned-in third-rate kid's cartoon. I thought we'd gotten past that.

Wouldn't the laws of cartoon morality dictate that the Empire views the defection of two cadets to be a rounding error in terms of importance, but we know* as viewers that Wedge Antilles will be a crucial player in the Rebellion's success?

*and for those members of the audience who don't, I'm sure they can Mon Mothma explain how "one person can change the future" or something along those lines, with some St. Crispin's Day sprinkled in.

All of that may or may not be true, but the storyline pushed by the episode is that they currently have a desperate shortage of trained pilots, so this cadet defection is supposed to remedy that.

They open the episode by losing 5-6 pilots in a single operation (and mentioning that that keeps happening), and end it by rescuing two guys. *MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner unfurls*

Oh and one other thing that drove me nuts was that when Sabine and Wedge are out on their training operation and Sabine refuses to fire on the Rebel transport... but then they come out of the simulator cockpits. I mean, if you know it's fake why are you risking blowing your cover, Sabine. ARGH. Like they don't show you they're in simulators until the mission's over, so I guess it's supposed to be a twist, but... there's no twist! If she's played the aggressive Imperial and then the viewer goes "Wow! She's murdering innocents just to stay in cover!" but then you have this relief when she comes out of a simulator. Which is not particularly original or even that great of a scene, but would have been better than what they did. Bleah.

BTW, what's the O/U on the number of episodes before Kallus defects? I think the soonest is the finale this season (maybe in the 1-2 episodes running up to it, but not sooner), but down the line in another season is more likely. He's basically run out of steam as an antagonist though, so maybe I'm underestimating how soon it'll happen.

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is slated to be released this month and is a spin-off of the original series, released in the 1970s and 1980s. Conspiracists online see a nefarious subtext to the new movie: to foist diversity on whites. Jews control the movies, the thinking goes, and the recent “Star Wars” films star women and ethnic minorities facing off against villains who are white men. The subtext, “alt-right” thinkers argue, is that the movies are teaching viewers that whiteness is bad.

“We could make faux recruitment posters for being a stormtrooper,” “WEHRMACHT_BITCHES_AT” wrote, referring to the foot soldiers of the evil Empire. “Star Wars is so deeply penetrated into the popular psyche, we’d be crazy not to exploit it… The Alt-Right needs to appropriate all the imagery of the Empire.”

“I won’t be paying to see ‘Rogue One’ — or give a dime to (((Disney))) ever again,” one commenter wrote, using triple parenthesis, or the “echo,” to signal to others a perceived Jewish influence.

They've done a pretty good job this season of dropping references that the audience gets and the cast doesn't -- a prophecy about a planet with two suns here, a crude drawing of a circle inside a circle there. It's a fine line, and so far they've managed to walk it in a satisfying way, but I don't know if they can keep the streak up; it seems to me like introducing Obi-Wan and Tatooine to a story set right before the first movie is almost certainly a bad idea.

Meanwhile: I haven't seen Rogue One yet, but holy shit Forest Whitaker is a get.

"Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are talented filmmakers who have assembled an incredible cast and crew, but it’s become clear that we had different creative visions on this film, and we’ve decided to part ways. A new director will be announced soon," said Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm in a statement.

"Unfortunately, our vision and process weren’t aligned with our partners on this project. We normally aren’t fans of the phrase 'creative differences' but for once this cliché is true. We are really proud of the amazing and world-class work of our cast and crew," said a statement from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

These creative differences have apparently surfaced during filming, because they've been shooting since February and there are several more weeks to go.

I'm way behind on Rebels, but I just watched Twin Suns, and man, as skeptical as I was about the whole Tatooine/Obi-Wan arc, it wound up being pretty much perfect. It was nice seeing the Guinness Edition Obi-Wan one last time (though I hope it is the last time).

I loved that his interaction with Ezra was basically "Kid, you and I are not in the same story, and you're on the wrong desert planet," but translated into inscrutable Alec Guinness Obi-Wan-ese.

And the confrontation with Maul...well, I liked it so much it left me feeling favorably toward Episode 1. It makes kind of a perfect midpoint between 1 and 4, between Obi-Wan's battle with Darth Maul and his battle with Darth Vader. Between the young apprentice fighting for his life and the supremely confident old soldier who loses on purpose, we get to see this perfect moment of Obi-Wan Kenobi at the height of his powers, not holding back.

And then it goes straight-up Kill Bill and he drops him in two seconds, and then cradles his body and talks to him as he dies.

Basically, season 3 is really good, you guys. Kallus's arc, Sabine's arc; it's really firing on all cylinders. I'm looking forward to wrapping it up and moving on to season 4.

Finished season 3. I enjoyed it, but man, the whole "imperial blockade" thing is just distractingly nonsensical, and it doesn't get any better with reuse.

Like, nevermind three dimensions and round planets; it doesn't make sense in one dimension. If you were watching a show, and there was a narrow hallway, and exits at both ends, and the bad guys were at one end, and the good guys tried to escape from the bad guys by running towards them, you would have questions.

Also, I can't help wondering how the Empire ever managed to achieve basic competence when its entire military is riddled with open insubordination. This has kind of always been the problem with the whole concept of the Sith, the idea that you can build an effective military organization by openly discouraging loyalty and obedience. Even dictatorships require loyalty -- hell, punishing the disloyal is kind of dicators' whole thing.

I don't mean that as a "these movies are going downhill" or "I've had enough of this series" sort of thing (although we're kinda dancing around the edge of the latter); I mean that 8 leaves off in such a way that attempting to tell any story that's a direct followup would cheapen what I took out of the movie. Also, it'd be kind of awkward, so there's that.

Also saw it tonight. We used our free tickets to experience the novelty of 4DX just to see what it was like (somewhat unimpressive and even mildly annoying).

There things I liked and didn't like and I could go on in detail if I wanted to. Ultimately I feel the prequels were an example of solid fundamentals but disastrous execution, while the sequels have sound execution but are built on horrible fundamentals. Much of the story of TLJ is a bloated bodge job that falls apart under any scrutiny (especially anything related to the prolonged Resistance's sloowwww escape effort), but there were some very good performances mid-movie. It probably could have been trimmed a lot.

My biggest takeaway is that Rian Johnson chickened out of taking Star Wars in a new and (what would have been) interesting and more mature direction. It would have given Rey and Ren more agency and really strengthened them overall as characters. Instead Rian backed away to return Star Wars to its simplistic dualistic roots. As a result, he's written things into a corner such that Episode 9's resolution is almost certain to be really lame.

Basically The "Grey Jedi" concept should have been embraced.

Luke's repudiation of the Jedi should have stood, and been clearly based on valid grounds such as citing it's dangerously repressive aspects, its rigid theocratic history which only saw in terms of black and white. He could have talked about how anyone wielding the force outside the order was deemed at least dangerous, if not outright evil and how most "Dark" Jedi were regular Jedi who'd either broken with the order or failed in their discipline somehow, that the Jedi were their own worst enemy.

If instead Luke had come to a realization that the Force does not have a good or evil side to it, that it only carries what you bring to it, that could have brought a more mature concept of the Force to fans, and strengthened Rey's and Kylo's characters, giving them more agency and more possibilities (and still would have tied in to certain aspects of the OT, like the Dagobah cave). Johnson toys with this notion, coming so very close to embracing it... only to back away at the last minute to retain the OT's simplistic dualistic good-vs-evil conception of the universe.

Kylo and Rey would have (and should) have been thereby freed to reach a detente, run away together, or even build something entirely new, with the Force being open to far more people than it had during the reign of the Jedi.

Kylo is now reduced to a one-dimensional 100% pure villain, with no redeeming characteristics or interesting features. By the end of TLJ he's just a Tiki Torch Vader.

If they defeat/kill him, well. Okay. Boring.

If he turns, it's after he's gone way farther than Vader ever did (remember - they spent all three movies establishing how trapped Vader felt, how he was a prisoner of destiny and that to resist it was futile) and really feels... lame. Ren has clearly beaten the only master he still felt beholden to, and didn't even really have a hard time doing so. He could do anything now and he has clearly chosen to go full Hitler ("But I was just joking bro! I only did it for the lulz!").

If they DO go for a "Grey Jedi" resolution in the end, it's going to be REALLY AWKWARD after Kylo's been established as more evil then Vader, and after they had a PERFECT setup to do that in this movie, only to reject it.

I think the franchise has essentially become a prisoner of itself. Whether you blame the fans, the money-men, George Lucas, or whoever, I doubt they'll ever recapture that lightning-in-a-bottle of the OT.